BEAUTIFULLY BROKEN

Crafting his most daring collection yet, Hong Kong-born fashion designer Robert Wun shares the pivotal moments, from both real life and cinema, that inspired his historic couture debut

-  Rosana Lai

Fear washed over Robert Wun when the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, the governing body behind fashion weeks in Paris, invited him to make his runway debut in January 2023, giving him less than three months to put together his first-ever couture collection. "I had seen a Netflix series where the main character says something along the lines of 'Getting what you always wanted is very scary', and that's exactly how I felt," Wun says. The honour, traditionally reserved for historic fashion houses based in Europe, is an opportunity granted to a handful of newcomers each season who undergo a stringent vetting process. "When I look back, though, I feel this is something I've been working towards my whole career; maybe I just didn't know it yet," he says.

It's a frigid afternoon in December and Wun sits with his legs curled up on a black leather chair in his new East London studio-which fellow designer Christopher Kane once occupied-and runs his hand through his wavy raven hair. Machines hum while his small team click and cut away behind a partition. At the time of writing, no show piece had been completed, invites had yet to be made and venues yet to be scouted; he would end up showing in Hotel d'Évreux, tucked inside Place Vendôme where the likes of Chopard and Valentino have their Paris headquarters. With a sprawling to-do list a month before deadline, Wun, understandably, looks a little weary, but excitement takes over with every mention of the collection. There are things he's worried about, he tells Tatler, but the designs are not one of them.